The year began for me with a dash up to Scotland for the New Year weekend, so technically this is probably a 1994 activity as well as 1995.

What I remember of the trip is that it took a long time to drive there on my own, it was snowy when I arrived and we nearly got snowed in, and we were staying in a log cabin on the west side of Loch Ness. The rest is a blur.

Continuing the wintery theme I went out one cold clear afternoon early in the year to take these photos around Willen Lake.

During the spring I went skiing at Serre Chevalier. This trip was notable for the fact that there wasn’t a lot of snow when we arrived, and also that my skis set off home on a different bus from myself, after a mix-up in the hotel lobby during the loading process.

So why did I call this post “Asian Adventures” ? Mainly because my job role at the time involved some work with a well known Malaysian oil company, and I made three visits over to their new refinery at Melaka to meet up with some of my old friends from way back when and to do some work on refinery planning ad scheduling. I’m not sure why I ended up going because, quite frankly, the way that piece of work was designed was nothing to do with me. Maybe it’s just that I was the one most willing to say yes. On reflection, I wasn’t the only one from the team, but I seemed to go for longer. Three trips for a total of 8 weeks, if I remember correctly. I still possess a load of the tough plastic coat hangers that the hotel used for returning ironed laundry.

Anyway, back at the plot, Melaka is a small town halfway up the west coast of mainland Malaysia, and it was at one point in its past a Dutch colony. A number of the key public buildings and streets still have their Dutch names. However, the overall aura of the place was very much Asian-tiger, new growth and modern, even if the back streets were taking a little while to catch up.

During at least one of those trips I took time off to visit old friends in Singapore – a shortish 3 hour drive down the motorway. It was a great place to spend the weekend. I remember on one of those I was very much flavour of the month with one of my work colleagues who rented a flat in central Singapore city. Why ? Because I’m not Malaysian and not Singaporean and was therefore allowed to take my Malaysian registered car into Singapore. Singaporeans weren’t allowed to because, essentially, the Singapore government liked to put fairly punitive taxes on locally bought cars (it’s not a big place) and as a result the richer locals would simply pop over the causeway and get themselves a cheap Malaysian purchase to bring back. A legal ban was set up rather than an import tax. Anyway, I was able to give said colleague a ride all the way home, in return for use of his spare room for the weekend.

And after all those adventures I finished off the year with a very autumnal trip down to Devon. I think it may have been just a few days before Christmas when we went, and it was wet and windy most of the time.